The Bugle - Dynamic Pricing means listen now or The Bugle owns your home

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

Andy is with Ria Lina and Alice Fraser to look at latest news from the world of music, as well as the latest in global political misadventures. And whales.The Bugle cannot exist without your support, please show it here: https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateFeaturing:Andy ZaltzmanAlice FraserRia LinaProduced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4314 of The Bugle, one of the world's undisputed top billion non-visual newscasts. The most reliable source of unreliable truth that you could possibly rely on. I'm Andy Zoltzman and if you can't stand the heat, bad luck. It does increasingly look like the heat is here to stay, broadly I mean not necessarily where you personally are depending on your location, time of year, the weather and of course what type of clothes you're wearing if any, no judgement. Anyway

on a global level the heat relative to previous heats on Earth in recent millennia is definitely here to stay. So if you can't stand the heat, and you are, for example, wearing Antarctic exploration kit on a hot day in a busy commercial kitchen whilst doing star jumps, frankly, I can't help you. Your problem, you find as a solution, but do enjoy the show. Anyway, what am I doing here?

Is this my job? We are recording live as we speak, as we often do when we're recording, in an underground bunker. Bunker or recording studio? Chris, I can't remember. I mean there's two women in it, so I think it's probably important to clarify. We are here in London where once the lonely Auroch whimpered soft in the moonlight, going back a while in Italy. And I'm going to be joined by two of the following five people. See if you can guess which two. Alice Fraser, Axel Rose, Josephine Bonaparte, Rhea Leena and Peter Breugel the Elder.

If you guess one and four, you're correct. Well done. Well done, Buglers. Alice, welcome back to the hemisphere. Thank you. I am so delighted to be in what I think of as the correct hemisphere for my skin color. And you mentioned Axel Rose who I think is really underrated. Wheel Rose gets all of the credit for progressing human history forward, but actually Axel was the vital part of the technology.

Ria, how was your summer been? It is so good to be here. You may call me Josephine. Okay, right. There we go. It was good. It was, you know, it had some sun in it. I never knew when. The number of times I left the house and went,

oh, could have worn shorts. Really irritated me. But, you know, and here's September. So yay to the school run. Before we start, I would like everyone to bear in mind that I have just completed a 26 hour flight with a nearly three year old and a six month old. I also just want to tell everyone how to blag their way through security at Doha Airport, which is as they pull your bags aside aside, as suspicious, you have your three-year-old vomit directly into the security bucket. That's what they pull?

They wave you through. That is a good tip. It doesn't work for adults, though. Especially if they find little, like, condom baggies in the bucket, then you're really in trouble. Also, can I just do a call out to a listener? I assume he's a listener the man

Who unlocked the door and finally came out of the parents room after 10 minutes of waiting for us to fuck off looking like a? Mildly sheepish 35 year old man who had a nap instead of a family of four Yeah, I just want him to know that he should go himself very much And I just hope he's a bugle listener who really likes my material So he can hear this and know that the Look that I gave him as he slunk past me a lady stood with a feverish weeping child vomit soaking into my bra Was the perfected pinnacle of my full contempt for everything that he stands for He's the shithead who refuses to admit that he's been bitten in a zombie movie

And he has no social conscience at all. I want him to go stand on one leg in a salt lake I just think he's what an asshole and he has no social conscience at all. I want him to go stand on one leg in a salt lake. I just think he's... What an asshole. Well, it's alright. That's Target bugle demographic right there. But what if he was listening to an episode? He's a selfish, solipsistic, narcissistic, baby space thieves. But how do we feel if he was actually listening to an episode while he was resting in the family room?

I would want him to know that he should go f*** himself. Yeah, okay. What a dick. Anyway, we are recording on the 3rd of September, 2024. If you travel back in time, just 358 short years, then you'd have been saying, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the city of London.

It was just down the road from here. The highly controversial Great Fire of London would have been on day two of five If anyone could find a way of entertaining people for five straight days that didn't involve burning the city to the ground I'm sure someone's working on it somewhere tomorrow's National Wildlife Day apparently There's a special new scheme this year on National Wildlife Day To bring wildlife to everyone all zoos and aquariums in the world are going to be leaving all the animals' cages, enclosures, pools and tanks open for the day to try to rebuild those broken bridges between humans and our fellow earthbound species. Good luck to everyone who lives nearby.

As always, a section of the Bugle is going straight in the bin this week. Well, it's also National Skyscraper Day, apparently, so we have a Skyscraper Facts section for you that's going in the bin, including, fact one, the definition of a skyscraper is nothing to do with the height of the building. It all depends on the relative location of the top of the building and the sky. A garden shed catapulted upwards from the top of a mountain is, temporarily at least, a skyscraper, but a 500 meter high tower in a heavily polluted city such as Delhi where the sky has ceased to exist, not a skyscraper. So make sure you get those right for tax purposes.

Fact two, most so-called skyscrapers are not actually topped with any sort of scraping mechanism. Many have pointy bits at the top and are thus sky jabbers, others a smooth rounded summit, others just a flat roof. Very few have anything that can actively scrape the sky and the sky moreover is hard to scrape in common with many non-solid things. In any case the sky generally self repairs very quickly after being scraped or even having some of itself scraped off so basically skyscrapers don't exist. Your material has become very laden with this kind of stuff since you signed up

with Big Sky Fork. Of course that's my wrestling name. Does that mean that the Gherkin's more like a sky massage gun? I believe so yes. I'm glad you went with that option. Family show. If only because you don't want to be using glass in that. And finally Jimi Hendrix was obsessed with skyscrapers. The original lyric in the song Purple Haze was excuse me while I scrape the sky and the title of the song itself was purple 280 meter high tower combining residential and commercial spaces and then someone told him it was in the wrong sense there the wrong tense it was rise instead of rose that section is in the bit that have made it purple highs Oh, hey, it's Jetson. Top story this week, music. Well, another festival season has been consigned to the record books for historians to pour over the stats and work out who the best band or solo artist of the summer was based on some complicated algorithm, no doubt.

So we lead off this week with a bugle music section and well, there's only one place to start really because the world has been ironically and appropriately rocked to its core by the astonishing revelation that free market economics do not always treat everyone with respect, fairness and honesty. The dynamic pricing scandal relating to the Oasis reunion tour, I think that's really got to the very heart of what it means to be alive. And to what it means to be an Oasis fan. Yeah. Question is, so if you if people don't know what this is there's dynamic pricing going on for Oasis tickets they started on sale at about

130, 150 pounds and by the by the time that they were getting towards sold out, they were going for about £300 or £400 a pop. I'm sort of okay with dynamic pricing as long as it works in both directions, that you're allowed to kind of shoot your prices up to take advantage of people's desperation, but you have to give refunds proportionate to the level of disappointment people feel when the concert is a bit shit. You could actually make money by going to a bad concert. Well this is the thing, yeah exactly,

because what people think they're buying is a ticket back to a time that they were in when Oasis was together. So when life was easy and they had a full head of hair. But actually, what you're most likely to get is a couple of old guys who remind you of how old you are now. And haven't been playing music together

for famously for ages. And they'll be walking their way through their greatest hits with a mix of bitterness and nostalgia and I want $200,000 back thank you. I mean they might not even be together by the time the tour happens. Those two are so volatile. To be fair that's what people are paying for. This is a gambling enterprise in the hopes that they will break up on stage while you're there. So it's not okay well then in that case we're not paying for. This is a gambling enterprise in the hopes that they will break up on stage while you're there. So it's not okay. Well, then in that case, we're not paying for a music concert. We're paying for like the comeback of the Jeremy Kyle show.

Essentially. I mean, they could be at either ends of the stadiums or rooms. Wouldn't you love it if there was an envelope of DNA and they come out? Surprise, you're not related. Well, it is set to be the not really necessary cultural event of 2025 and what did you say, the tickets being flogged at inflated prices as the British public's desperate nostalgia and desire to pretend this stupid f***ing millennium never started has seen them queuing round the virtual block. And you can understand it I guess, the chance to see a fascinating sociological experiment

in which we finally discover whether the unstoppable force of the chance to earn shitloads of money as essentially a covers band of your own former band can outshunt the immovable objects of a stubbornly simmering sibling rivalry it could be a I mean she's sensational I would cue up if it was Harry and William right playing Oasis covers. Yes. Which is, yeah, with Megan and Cade on backing vocals. That's a show I would watch. The term dynamic pricing, I mean that's one of the great euphemisms of modern life. Oh yeah, the dynamic is thrusting. That's what's happening.

Other great euphemisms of course include for example hot dog, gentleman's club in the UK, public school and USA. So it's not I mean I guess you know ripping people off at every available opportunity is what we didn't fight the Cold War for but could have fought it if it ever got hot. So you know it's paying respect to all the people who could have died in the Cold War had it ceased being cold more than it did. And of course, long gone are the days when anything just had a simple value in itself, apart from of course from tickets to my very reasonably priced tour show from November

the 1st through to quite deep into next year actually but buy tickets to a tour. How deep? Like are we scraping? Are we poking? Oh, I don't know. I'm so glad we're filming this. Can we please clip this out? This is quality audio. Oh no no, please go online and see the video of this and what Andy's doing with his fingers. The tour definitely fondles fairly deep into next year.

Fondles? I think the fondles are going to be the support band in the Oasis. Better than grabbing 2025 by the... But I do think if we're going to have dynamic pricing for music, theatre, whatever, sport, we should apply this principle in other areas of life such as criminal sentencing, whereby the judge can say, well the prisons are quite empty at the moment so your minor traffic offence is going to cost you seven years in a maximum security jail, bad luck. Or with healthcare, there's a lot of demand right now so if you want that appendectomy

you're going to have to have a triple bypass as well. Another option would be for Oasis to do their bit to control the price by promising that they will only be doing stuff from their new concept album based on the 17th century chemist Jan Baptiste van Helmond. Just to see that enthusiasm dissipate. But I mean it's gonna cost a lot because it's not only the ticket of course you've got a hotel and you've got backup accommodation accommodation when you smash a hotel room to pieces to give yourself the full rock experience The merchandise to prove that you've been there. Otherwise, what's the point the food?

Although I assume that there will be free bits of round bread with every ticket It seems only right if you're paying that much money for a ticket to see Oasis you get a role with it So let's assume that the whole thing with all the tickets plus all the other things you need to get there and stay there and to eat and all that costs you, I'm going to make up a figure here, £3,000. What could you get for that money? Well you could get at least 300 copies of the Oasis album standing on the shoulders of giants which you could then glue together into the shape of a giant and stand on its shoulder for the ultimate Oasis experience.

You could pay an Oasis tribute band to play to you personally whilst you're having a bath, get a nice acoustic in the bathroom as well. You could buy tickets to every single one Or you could get, well, I think around about 400 automatic dancing popes. Not real popes, little toy dancing popes. I mean, I would totally go Catholic for a dancing pope. Yeah. I think we all would. Could the dancing popes, like, hang on a rope and sell soap? Well, I...

I mean, I'm into this. One of the great triumphs of my childhood was a raffle at a village fete. I won a pope on a rope, which was a pope-shaped bit of soap on a rope, which I then gave to my confused father for his birthday. And then just, I don't know, 35 years later he died. The pope? Just, so do wash with popes, but please wash with popes responsibly. wash with popes but please wash with popes responsibly. Let's have some other music news now. Alice, you are the bugle's official Taylor Swift

co-, well you are the main Taylor Swift, we have several sub-Taylor Swift correspondents of course, as all news organisations do now. Yes. Bring us up with the latest in the Swiftian universe. Well that is to the point rather which is that news can no longer be reliably expected to reach the hearts and minds of the people unless you attach it to Taylor Swift stuff because... Sports going the same way actually as well. It's terrible you have to have someone in the audience in a pair of flashy shades in order to make anything worthwhile anymore. So Taylor Swift has been at the heart of an argument about inflation, just as Oasis are at the heart

of this economic discussion, but also at the heart of a discussion about terrorism, because apparently there is a group of terrorists growing and growing whose main claim to fame seems to be that they planned but did not succeed in an attack on a Taylor Swift concert, going for the heart of the culture as it were. But I can't wait to hear her album about what bad boyfriends they would have been. How disappointed she was. But I'm sure there will be some sort of smell or something that will pull her out of it. She's very good at the sensory recovery. I just feel like it's sort of an indictment on our culture

that news stories about a growing terrorist group need to hook the name of Taylor Swift onto them in order to be clicked through past the headline. It might be a smart way of getting everybody to imbibe the news, though. Do you know what I mean? Make every story related to Taylor Swift. I mean, we all understand a little bit less about economics

because of her influence on inflation. I even, I thought I, I always think I understand inflation. And then I read an article about Taylor Swift and the effect she's had on inflation. And now I can't tell if up or down is bad. I can't tell, they go, oh, it would have gone down, but she made it go up, but it'll be done by the end of the summer.

And I'm like, so, and the Bank of England didn't foresee this and they didn't take it into account. I'm like, so and the Bank of England didn't foresee this and they didn't take it into account. Like, OK, so what's the good bit? The Bank of England were going to make it 2 percent, but then she made it 1.9. Wait, what? I don't I have no idea. Did she have a good effect, a bad effect?

Is the Bank of England even in the game anymore? I don't. I mean, what's your best medium of communicating things like this? Do you need like a Taylor Swift Bank of England cage match kind of? If they could make it rhyme, that would help if it had a middle eight, you know, I'd be able to remember it. I think I think we need to. I don't know if I understand more or less about inflation now that Taylor Swift is involved.

But I mean, just raise a rather charming scenario that the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee sit down pouring over the concert listings. Although Swift is not coming this year it appears Selena Gomez is doing an arena tour. But is she doing dynamic pricing and how does that have an effect on inflation in general? But yes, so she's affecting inflation and she's growing Terrorism, it's all right No, I think she's she's just tangentially related to the terrorism and in order to make people pay attention to terrorism

There's people like terrorism is so early 2000s I said they want to hook it on to rising star, a risen star, in order to make it jazzy again. Because if it's threatening our way of life and our culture, blah blah blah, sounds a bit weird. You know, maybe xenophobic to talk about that thing, but if they're coming for Taylor Swift, we can all get on board. I mean, it is scary.

With her, not with them. Get on board with her, not with what they're trying to do. I just thought... I should state she is, by all accounts, opposed to terrorism. Taylor Swift, I mean... I haven't heard her make a public statement about it today. No, but if you play her songs backwards... Very much an anti-terrorist vibe going on.

Donald Trump versus the world of music now. And some of music's most famous stars have been complaining that Donald Trump is using their songs. This is a story that seems to crop up pretty much every time there's a major election anywhere as music artists have their songs used completely out of context by people with whom they fundamentally disagree with on everything the white stripes Have complained

And you think I mean it's kind of weird thing for Trump to use the white stripe in the seven nation army is the kind of International cooperation that Trump seems very skeptical of Abba also apparently have complained Bruce Bruce Springsteen I mean, it's I know yeah, there was a time when he was He was walking on stage using an excerpt from an issue of the bugle Then I was very upset by that. That's just totally Stubbed about Michelangelo from from way back But um must be quite annoying if you're a if you be quite annoying if you've created a song to mean one thing

and some c*** comes along and tries to make it mean something else. And it's incredible as well because he was using the winner takes it all from ABBA, which as we know from the last election, he did not take it all because he won it, didn't he? But he did not get the presidency. So it really doesn't work for him in any way, shape, or form. But I think that these musicians, I'll be honest, I think they're missing a trick, because, of course, you know, the campaign has said,

we have bought the licenses from their equivalents of what we have over here, which is PRS. And so we're allowed to use the music unless the artist has to write to the licensing board and say, you are not allowed, my music is not allowed to be used in a political way. So I assume that they're all doing that now, because they can't technically sue the campaign,

because permission has been granted. But I urge these musicians to think again, because I think there's a lot to be had by having your music used by Trump. First of all, I was a musical comic, so I have music registered with PRS. And one of the things that happens is you get paid according to the size of the venue. And as we know, all of his rallies are attended by millions. So that's billions.

I mean, that's a lot of money to be had right there. People listening to your music. And I, so I wanted to just, cause I know he sometimes listens To the bugle and I just wanted to offer my music to him if he wanted I could rewrite some of my songs So they're a little bit more appropriate one of my songs is called. I was coming I was coming I was coming when you came so I can rewrite that to I was winning. I was winning then you won It's not easy being yellow It's my version. Of course. It's not easy being orange I could the internet porn song no he can just have that one as is but I have options you should see what I

can do with ping-pong balls I'm sure he could work with it UK news now and well we touched on this briefly last last week but it has been a very strange summer here in the UK. This is our second episode back. We briefly mentioned it last week. A summer of kind of rather monochrome governmental behaviour rather than the kaleidoscopic fluorescent chunder storm we've become used to.

We had the far-right hijacking a brutal tragedy to try to advance their delusionally sclerotic agenda, but the people of Britain rejecting and countering that. And then we have the court system, which I think is still processing a drunken disorderly case involving a cricket fan who got a bit overexcited in 1938 when Len Hutton beat Don Bradman's test record score at the Oval, suddenly speed cranking into action and dispensing well-merited insta-justice to some of the especially repugnant rioters and fury stokers. So where are we now as a nation? I don't know yet. We'll keep you posted over the next, I don't know, 10 to 20 years here on The Bugle as we see how things evolve.

Suffice it to say for now that the far-right has proved once again that the social virus of pseudo-patriotic, historically inane shit, Hedry, has not been entirely eradicated, despite all the Darwinian evidence suggesting that it really, really should have been. Well then, Chuck D, time for a f***ing rethink, you old dead bearded loon. It's a tricky thing as somebody who keeps coming back to the UK and trying to decide whether to live here or not, because you've got, on one hand you've got like, oh no, there's race riots, and on the other hand you've got like, good they're being arrested that's yes i feel like you on one hand it looks like the the social fabric of society is breaking down and on the other hand it looks like the social fabric of society is working i'll be honest i don't know why you came back all you had to do is write

something on facebook they would have arrested you for that you didn't have to be here um yes a stranger stranger but let's look now at some education news. Ofsted, the organization that rates schools, is going to change the way that it marks schools from a one-word summary to something that actually tells you what is happening in your kids school. Now I think this is this is progress. I mean one- word summaries are the kind of thing that might be appropriate in a social media clip with a boy band who have a new single coming out or at the end of a show trial for example. Guilty is usually

sufficient in a football commentary. Goal, just keep quiet in between. Or in describing American Republican presidential candidates. But fundamentally reducing any complex issue to a one-word summary is ridiculous, point proved. Even my performance in the Comedy Zone at the Edinburgh Festival in 2000, which I will admit was not the most nuanced and complex of creations in the human artistic canon, required two words in the Observer to sum it up, grindingly and mediocre. It feels that offstage ought to be going into more depth at Rio than single words. I know you've got kids in the school system. I think this is great news because yes, I do have kids in the system and I've been struggling with this system for years. If you don't have kids, we have four levels at which we can rate a school.

Outstanding, which is what everybody wants. Good, requires improvement, which, of course, is famously hyphenated, and inadequate. And if you're found inadequate these days, then your school's automatically academized, which, Alice, basically means that if you run, say, a carpet company, you can then run the school. Um, because that makes perfect sense. Yeah, we do that in a straight line a few years ago.

I thought Academize was when they wrote a fictional series about you running some sort of wizarding school. It could be, or it could just be a normal state school from which two boys then take over Saturday night television for the rest of our lives. It's interesting to me because I feel like on one hand having a one word summary of the performance of a school is congruent with the way that parents get the reports of how the school day went from their children when what they want is a detailed report and

they'll get you know, fine, needs improvement. Oh that's that, I mean that kid's in top set if you get that kid. But I've been using this system for years, not just to describe schools. I've been using it in other areas, which is why I'm glad that we're making it a little bit more comprehensive, because I've been using it to describe my ex-husband for a long time. And obviously, when we first got together, he was outstanding. And then it kind of went from good to to inadequate.

And and it just but it isn't enough. That doesn't hold out an evening with girlfriends over cocktails. I need more than that. So I'm glad that we're going to give schools a school report now. Yeah. All feedback should be specific and actionable. Specific and actionable? Yes.

I feel like all feedback should be specific and actionable. What are you trying to do? Improve education? Don't come over here with your foreign ideas. I mean, it does seem to make sense. I mean, summing up a school in one word is bound to be insufficient. Like summing up a novel in a single grunt or describing a journey as a mark out of three in which if it's one one you died on the journey.

But anyway, a report card system to replace the one word summary, that to me makes obvious. So say if you've got a school, because obviously not every aspect of a school works to the same quality. If you've got a school that's, for example, just won an Oscar for best musical score from the video for its Year 7 Nativity Play and has provided interpreters for a United Nations summit from its GCSE modern language classes, but has a chemistry teacher known as Boom Boom Betty who's grown up three consecutive science labs due to mixing up grams and tons and copper sulfate and nitroglycerin, and that has a ritual novel burning

assembly every Wednesday. One word doesn't really cut the mustard, does it? You need a bit of nuance. Yeah, and I would have said that school is good at the arts, shit at science. Well, every year at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, there is a controversy among artists about the giving of star ratings for comedy shows in reviews. That the five-star rating,

out of five-star rating system is inadequate to fully encompass the experience of a comedy show. It is very reductive and what if the reviewer is just an idiot and who just doesn't get the comedian and then everyone reads this controversy and checks the comedians who are complaining to find out who gave them one star. If only the stars were accompanied by say a few paragraphs of explanation about the show and what the reviewer felt when they were there I mean is that crazy if I am I being crazy?

That's yeah, that's very retro. I think I didn't realize that's what the stars were for. I thought it's just describing what kind of person the comedian was How many stars do Jewish comedians get? But yes, they're now going to expand them into like more school reports. So I'm looking forward to reading the school reports of schools. But I feel like we should be giving the school reports and we should be giving the schools back. They give these these in name. If you have kids, they have a system where everything is automated. And so all of your kids get the same phrases. You know, like, shows potential but needs to reach it.

And I feel like that's the same thing. If my kids come out with Cs, I'll be like, well, that school showed potential but they never reached it. You know, we just need to, I think we need to flip it back on them. Yes. If this school applied its brilliant intellect, it might have better outcomes, that kind of thing. Exactly, or you know, or the teachers, you know, head teacher, you know, needs to develop better social skills. Plays badly with others. The Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, said the new grades will not confuse parents.

And it's nice for us to hear a politician expressing faith that the British public can understand something more than one word long which is progress I think what does Brexit mean Brexit thanks for clearing that up you idiots right to be fair that's a criticism that can be leveled at both sides of politics love is love and The horseshoe effect in full. Horseshit effect. Let's have a quick look at the, well the state of the American presidential campaign, in particular J.D. Vance, who appears to be, I don't know if he's an Achilles heel for

Trump, given that Trump appears to be 100% Achilles heel. Free. He has no heels. If you don't like him. Podcast from 2021 has emerged in which Vance said that professional women choose a path to misery in prioritizing careers over having children. He also said, you know, so he said, pursuing racial or gender equity is like the value system that gives their life meaning, but they all find that the value system leads to misery. Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar described the ignorant and xenophobic rhetoric spewed

by Vance as quotes dangerous and un-American which I think were the two qualities that Trump was looking for when he picked Vance. I know both of you are massive fans of JD Vance and are hoping that you know he'll... Hey listen, listen the man's wife is... Do you know Usha, his wife? She's Hindi. Not personally. And I am a massive fan of any white man that finds us attractive. So I don't know entirely how to be funny about this. In a world where it is almost impossible to afford a house in any major metropolitan city in the world on a single income, it is

imperative for women to build a sufficiently stable career that they can flush 40 to 70 percent of it down the toilet For a few years without losing their ability to pay rent or survive for the rest of their lives That takes like time and energy and effort to build your career, right? But if they stayed home imagine how clean that toilet would be I mean the alternative right is to stay at home You've got to find a rich man who has a house You'd be completely financially dependent on a guy who may or may not turn out to be a rich man who has a house. You'd be completely financially dependent on a guy who may or may not turn out to be a cockhead who leaves you for the secretary.

Or you can sort of try and have it both, but bring up your children as a stay at insecure rental mother. Look, I have managed to build a career that is sufficiently sustainable to build care work so that I get to be the kind of mother that I want to be but that's in part because I grew up with a chronically ill mother myself and I had to look after her when I was starting my career right and so now I get to do the kind of job that I want to do and be the kind of mother that I want to do and the only sacrifice I make is most of my sleep and my sanity and presumably my bone density. But most jobs, you know, like JD Vance doesn't kind of factor in the calculations and sacrifices that might be as stark as like the physical well-being

of your children versus the emotional well-being of your family home life. And to pretend that that is mainly the fault of feminism or liberalism or anything other than the kind of rapacious consumer capitalism, landlord managerial line go up bullshit you spend most of your time worship-feely nuzzling the asshole of is disingenuous to the point of just absolute derangement. Go f*** yourself and deal with the baby that emerges, JD Vance. I have to say overall I'm a massive fan of his presence in the current election because I think that he is single-handedly going to be the reason Trump loses and I'm grateful for that. I mean the fact is it always

surprises me when you find out that someone like that does have an interracial marriage because Usha is is Hindu. However in her last speech, she made a speech in Milwaukee where she did not bring up anything to do. She didn't bring up her upbringing. She didn't bring up her personal faith. Didn't bring up the fact that they have an interfaith relationship. None of it. Because last time she did, she got loads of vitriol and hate for it. So I just think it's going to backfire. And I kind of hope it does. I think even Trump is realizing that he picked... He said, there's an interview where he said,

why did you pick JD Vance? And he went, well, the guy loved me. He loved me. He's a great fan of me. He picked me. He loved me. So we picked him. And I went, even Trump is seeing how bad a mistake that was when a month after Kamala, Kamala, I saw her kids in the thing, explain

how to say her name now. I have to go through it every time they go, you say, comma, like a comma and then la, because she's here. So about a month after Kamala was on the scene, even Trump on true social was going, Oh, I had a dream last night that Biden changed his mind. And he said, no, actually, I am am going to run and then at the DNC they actually ratified him instead of her. And he's also now beginning to regret JD Vance because he clearly went, oh, hang on a second. I'm the white asshole on this ticket. You can't also be a white asshole. There's not room for two white assholes, but he loves me. He thinks I'm amazing. So choose a path to misery I think. I mean that would be quite a winning new slogan for the Trump campaign if they feel they need to freshen

things up a bit from Make America Great again. Choose a path to misery. I think that could be a vote winner. And finally this week, dead whale news now and well, huge controversy in the whale community. A beluga whale named Faldimir has sadly passed away. He's been found dead in presumably in the sea off the southwest coast of Norway. There have been allegations that he's a Russian spy now he's been mysteriously silenced before he could be questioned about it. So he's been floating around off the coast of Norway for years. He's sort of a hero to the people. They discovered him some time ago. He's wearing a harness that says, equipment St. Petersburg on it and has a mount for what is presumably a camera. The Russian government will not comment on this harness. And so people assume

that either he's a spy whale or possibly a therapy whale. If he is a spy whale, can I just put out this advice to any other spy whales that happen to be floating around? Don't wear a harness that has equipment St. Petersburg on it. No, no, I mean it's a no-brainer, right? Double bluff? I mean, this, yeah, this, I mean, I don't know where we are. I don't know where we are in the sub-sub-aquatic spy Cold War business.

It's possible that he's just a surviving relic of the Cold War. Yeah. But he's got a lot of enemies though. Yeah. It's hard enough to be subtle when you're passing a briefcase on a park bench and being a beluga whale at the same time, let alone if you're wearing a harness that says Equipment St. Petersburg on it. They've got him in a cooled area and they're going to do an autopsy on him to find the cause of death and we will know if the body disappears before that autopsy takes place that there's been something fishy going on.

Oh, come on, come on. We can't beat that. That's a kriller line. I heard a rumor that this whole whale spying thing is spreading, not just Russia, spreading across the world and they're recruiting an increasing number of whales. I don't know the source of that information, so cetacean needed. Oh, my gosh. Just oh, OK. Blow hole in one Andy.

Anyway, I tried to call Moscow to find out, just try and get someone to say whether or not it was their whale, but all the phone lines were down. I tried to ring them up to get an answer, but I just got a hum back. I'm going to call that one a fluke. It was discovered actually by these father and son Norwegian people who were out in an amphibious cross that needed to be, it can be rowed in water but can be driven on land. It's called an Orkar. Orfilla no gilla.

I'm very much enjoying this. You do have a skill that I do not have. But I couldn't get any answers out of anyone. People said Nat wouldn't tell me. I came up against a real cat got involved. I think an American spy cat fell off a boat into the sea and was eaten by another spy marine mammal, porpoise. Anyway, I don't know. Fish bump. I had a friend who worked for the British Secret Service Marine Mammal Division. He went undercover trying to look like a 1970s rock star.

He dived into the water to try and help out. It didn't do any good for his artificially curly hair. It ruined his perm. Oh my gosh. And his fur coat as well. I'm not sure what animal it was made of. It looked a bit minke to me. And Finn. He was so... I was going to go with that, he was very upset and when you get upset he used to like...

When he got upset he sounded really like the band Crowded House and he'd let out a really big fin whale. I don't know how you do it, it's amazing. It's a disability. Just gonna wait away over here. Right, before you all start feeling too blue, let's move on and finish the show. So there we are, apologies for what you've just had through for those, but you know, I've been having a whale of a time right plugs time as I mentioned earlier I'm on tour from the start of November all the available shows I just really want to say call me Israel it's only three thousand pounds

to see him in every every opportunity he on tour. You can either see 45 dates of Zoltzman or one Oasis gig. Your call Buglers. Details at andyzoltzman.co.uk or elsewhere on the internet. Alice? I am in the UK right now. I'm running a Writers Afternoon intensive class. If you want to come along and write with me on Sunday the 8th of September at the Bread and Butter

Lounge the application form is available at linktree.alicefraser.com. That's linktr.ee.alicefraser.com. You can get the application form to join me for Writers Afternoon. I'm also doing a bit of stand up here and there. So follow me on Blue Sky or X for the dates of that. They're coming up. I'll be doing Old Rope on Monday and various other bits and pieces. Old Rope will be my first gig back after a year off stand-up entirely, so come and watch me be absolute dogshit. Also my book, A Passion for Passion, has a release date. It's coming out on the 6th of February next year. So buy it now and they'll know how many copies to print.

So that's how the industry works nowadays. You don't buy things after they've been created. You buy them long, long before. That's great. I'm actually doing a gig on the 8th at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank in London if you're in London What time along 7 o'clock? What was yours? One till midday till 4 p.m. Perfect. So you can go go and write some comedy then come and see what I wrote earlier

It's 7 o'clock. It could you if you're in London on the 8th and then on the 9th I'm gonna be following Alice at Old Row because Hopefully one of us between, will have some jokes. We'll have some jokes. I'm doing that on the 9th. But just generally, just come say hi on socials. Just give me a follow and say hello. I'm then doing a charity show with Andy on the 25th of September at the Comedy Store

where we will be supporting young carers age 5 to 12. We're helping them have a childhood. So come along, support a good cause. we will be supporting young carers age 5 to 12. We're helping them have a childhood. So come along, support a good cause. I'll be hosting, Andy's gonna... I'm gonna bring, what, 10 minutes of absolute gold? 15? He's gonna bring 10 to 15 minutes of absolute gold

and the other two hours, cause it's a charity gig. I mean, that is a very, very worthwhile cause. I didn't know I was a young carer until I was about 25 We would have given you we would have taken to a house and give you a holiday Give me a childhood give me a childhood and send you birthday cards and stuff. Oh my goodness We would do that but also on is like Terry Alderton. We've got Joe Brand. We've got Jeff Norcott It's gonna be great. It sounds like an amazing gig. I might come along and watch it So I'm in the UK now come along and have a child free

Non-miserable evening. Because apparently you're, oh no wait, your kids make you happy. Come and be miserable away from your kids at this wonderful gig that we're doing. I quite like your kids. I just met one. Oh. Yeah, he's great.

Just so good. Also, I do a podcast called The Gargle, which is the glossy magazine to The Bugle's audio newspaper for Visual World, where we do all of the news, but none of the politics. So if you like The Gargle, which is the glossy magazine to the Bugles audio newspaper for Visual World where we do all of the news but none of the politics. So if you like The Bugle but would rather it were less political, ours is the place for you to come. So there you go. Also the news quiz is back this week so you can find out on BBC Sounds and from next week you'll be able to see me in a rare TV appearance on the show Taskmaster. Yay! I'm so excited for this Andy. We are all excited for this.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Anyway, we'll be back. Not next week because of an absolute deluge of cricket, meaning that it's not possible for me to record. The following week we'll be back with Tom Ballard and Nish Kumar and until then goodbye.